***Shuttle SP35P2 Review***

[Stellios]

A few people seem to have shown interest in these, so I have decided to do a bit of a review.

Note, any games perfomance ratings etc are estimates as I dont have any methods of getting accurate data.

Shuttle SP35P2 Spec

Chipset:
Intel P35 Chipset

CPU Support:
Socket 775

Memory:
DDR2 800, 1333 rated in Overclocking mode

Max Memory: 8GB

PSU:
400Watt, 80% or higher efficiency

Graphics Slot:
1 x 16x PCI-E (Dual Slot Card Capable)

Other slots:
1 x PCI (You lose this if you use a dual slot GFX card)
1 x Mini PCIe

Hard Disk Drives:
2 x SATA Hard Disk Drives on top of chassis, space for a 3rd (SATA or IDE) in Floppy Drive (albeit you lose the Floppy Disk)

Audio:
Realtek ALC888 7.1 Audio

USB:
6 x Slots on back + 2 x Slots on front

Toys:
Fingerprint Recognition Scanner

My Spec

Shuttle SP35P2
Intel Core2Quad Q6600 G0
4 x 1GB 6400 OCZ (4GB Total)
Leadtek 8800GTS 640mb

Windows Vista 64 Business Edition

Initial Build

First arrival of the item when removed from the box, thid thing oozes build quality and feels extrmely solidly built. You have to be very specific how you build a Shuttle, and this one is business as usual. First of all you need to uscrew the CPU heatsink and insert the CPU, then re-attatch the heatsink. This is a doddle as its only 4 screws, but be prepared to need a long screwdriver as 2 screws are fairly hard to access.

Next, the RAM, not a problem, its simple slips in as it would any other system

Next up, the Graphics Card. Now, a single slot card will be extremely easy to fit, but the galactus size of the 8800GTS 640mb means its a bit of an art. The wires from the PSU kind of get in the way, so you have to re-route the PSU wiring before the card will fit, kind of annoying as I was hoping Shuttle would be bright enough to realise this, but never mind, in goes the card, with the power plug just sitting perfectly positioned waiting to be plugged in.

Next up, insert the middle cage that holds the Floppy Drive (or HDD should you wish) and the DVD-RW, now this is very tight, it only just goes past the 8800GTS, literally we are talking millimetres, very well designed, although it had me nervous at first. Screw the cage down and connect the cabling which is already pre-placed for you, thanks a lot Shutttle for that.

Once you haev screwed that cage into position, your ready to screw the HDD cages on the top, this is very easy, simply a few more screws, and again your SATA and power plugs are already positioned perfectly so all you do is plug them in, the wiring in this thing really is immensly neat.

Right, your ready to switch on.

 

[Stellios]

Problems

Right, on inital switch on, its actually fairly quiet considering my setup, its about the volume level of an Xbox 360, I was quite hapy with it. I acessed the BIOS and set everything up, the BIOS is not the simplest to use, but ive seen far far worse. Next I insert my Windows disk and set it off on its way, windows installs no problems at all, then comes the boot into Windows, and BSOD......bloody great. Took it down to 2GB of RAM and upped the volts to 1.85v, it seemed to be alright with this and I left it at that for a few hours, then dropped the volts to 1.8v as it was ta default, and it started crashing again. Checked OCZs website and it stated you could use 2.1v through the RAM if you wanted, so I upped it to 2.1v, reinsterted my other 2GB of RAM and its been fine since with the full 4GB.

Air Flow

The Shutle has quite a lot of holes in the sides to allow airflow, and has 2 fans at the rear along with the PSUs exhaust, al in all it seems to run fairly cool and never seems to get hot.

The CPUs heatsink is very cleverly designed. It has an intake fan and an exhaust fan for itself, and it takes air from the inside of the shuttle, and blow it over the heatsink, then an exhaust blows the hot air straight out of the shuttle.

Clear CMOS

This Shuttle, as I think most have, has a clear CMOS button on the back of the case, so no need to access the motherboard or anything, just hit the button.

Build Quality

The Shuttle feels solidly built, and all the buttons on the front have a bit of a hard wearing feel to them.

Size

For what is in this thing, it really is an extremely small pocket rocket, its about the size of a sheet of A4 paper in height and width, length wise its slightly longer than a sheet of A4 paper, so considering what is in it, it seems very small indeed, especially considering it seems to have no overheating problems at all.

For comparison

 

[Stellios]

Now, the part people have been waiting for, the performance. This is all doen at 1280x1024, any AA or AF will be outlined.

Crysis

Naturally, when you have had Crysis kicking around for 3 weeks its a natural thing to have a major scrotal itch to try it, so it was the first to go on. It defaulted to everything on a High setting, with no AA or AF, to which I was quite surprised. Upon loading the game up, its certainly not smooth, but its not unplayable either, id guess it pulls a solid 35-40FPS, and seems to remain that way no matter what I throw at it in game.

Battlefield 2

This was my next testbed, due to my last rig not playing it brilliantly I couldnt wait to try this. Set everything to as high as I coud, and off we went. Well, my jaw neary hit the ground, it does not flinch, at all. To me, it seems to be on the Vsync, constantly, nto once did it jerk ok freeze, and at no point did it do anything other than impress me.

Counterstrike: Source

Naturally, the one and only, it had to be tested. I took this game, set everything as high as I could, with 8xAA and 16xAF, and headed off into a deathmatch server on dust2. In short, it seemed very happy holding a solid 130FPS pretty much constantly.

Insurgency Mod (Half Life 2)

Now, Im not sure how many people actually bother with this game, but to me its brilliant. My old rig, a 3200 Venice with 1GB RAM and a 6800 couldnt run it smoothly unless it was set at low graphics, so I thought i would give this a go. Set everything to maximum, and enabled HDR, 16xAA and 16xAF. Off we went into the maps, expecting ti to at least stutter a bit, and to my utter surprise, it took it no problem at all, and no matter what map i went on, it held itself pretty much constatntly over the 70FPS mark.

Voltages

This shuttle has a 400Watt PSU, which to many is not enough to run the setup I have, but what many people forget is that these PSUs are extremely efficient, and I have seen these babies run considerably more than I have in my rig.

In the BIOS, all of the voltages I put through the system are bang on what they should be, maybe very very slightly out, but realistically they are veyr much bang on what they should be on every rail. A lot more accurate than my old 450Watt PSU that only had to run a 6800 and 3200 Venice.

SuperPi

It handled a 1M calculation in 21 seconds. Bare in mind, everything is stock.

Conclusion

Overall, to me this feel like a solidly built piece of equipment, which can easily handle what Ive thrown at it, and bar a few hiccups of my own stupidity it seems to have all went together smoothly. The system, seem relatively stable, and after a fair few hours gaming im pretty happy that it will be fine for a fair while to come.

I would not hesistate to recommend one of these items to someone that knows how to handle a PC, I dont knwo whether I could tell any average joe to buy one, they seem very picky in what hadware they like or dislike, and from what ive been hearing you need to be very careful about what hardware you put in one, especially the SP35P2, which supposidly is notorious for hating OCZ RAM, but its taken mine fine, with a slight voltage prod.

Hope this review has been of use to someone, and I will update it again when I get 3dmark etc scores done.

I leave you, with the beaty that sits on my desk

 

[Stellios]

Any questions fire away and ill do my best to answer

Sorry about the delay between updates, my pizza got delivered so i had to scoff a 12" pizza and chips before resuming typing

 

[Stellios]

What the best monitoring program for temperatures adn ill happily check it out for you. I had speedfan, but its a bit craply laid out.

Pic will follow in a sec

 

[Stellios]

Right, shot of temps for you, managed to remove some of the crap off the speedfan menu. The Core Temp program just crashed as soon as i tried to install, probably Vista being ghey.

Bare in mind this has been on since around 4pm

Sizes.

Width

Length

Height

 

[Stellios]

yeah its speedstep. Lowers the clock rate at low load to keep temps down IIRC, it does jump up to 2.6GHz under load.

 

[Stellios]

wheres the finger scanner I hear they have?
any other comments on the noise?

EDIT: your cpu is running very cool! Imagine idle temps with the new 45nm cpus.

The fingerprint scanner is on the flip down bar, on the left hand side. See the little brown thing on the left, thats it. But its useless, ti was a sod to get set up in vista, adn I cannot get it working as a security measure for accessing windows. It can be used to kick in when exiting a screensaver, but other than that its about as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Implement it to work on your windows login and itll be useful, but i cant get it working.

Noise wise its not bad, Im trying to find some program that will let me monitor the GFX card fan, to see if its going full belt constantly, or whether its automatically programmed to change its fan rate as it gets hot. Its about the same as an xbox 360 while idle. The fans on *** back are auto adjusted by the BIOS, or you can set it yourself. The majority of the noise though seems to come from the PSU more than anything.

Yeah, its running cool because I have that speedstep or whatever it is running. Basically, at low load it drops the CPUs clock to 1.6GHz instead of 2.4GHz, producing less heat, and therefore less fan noise

 

[Stellios]

Yep, they fit, but only just, there is about an inch of play from the shell of the case to the back of the card on the GTX.

Pic taken from a guy at another forum, its not mine.

Have you got any temp readings under load? (Unless I missed them).

Not for the GFX card no, but under load the CPU goes to about 55 degrees tops, thats based on a good session on crysis, and a 32M run of superpi.

 

[Stellios]

friendly word mate, your RAM defaults to 1.8 volts, adn an auto optimize doesnt change this, so you may need to up the juice on the RAM manually. I had loads of stability bother as I overlooked that simple fact.